," she said. "How can you be a Muslim?" It
was something she had never understood and had wanted to know ever since
she learned what he was, but she asked it now to hurt him.

He gave her that silent, burning stare, and she began to wonder, with a
rippling of fear in the pit of her stomach, if she was in danger.

"That was my fate," he said. "I had to lose my mother and father to find
God."

Before she could catch herself, she started to laugh with a kind of
wildness, a touch of hysteria. She had been angry at him and had goaded
him and feared his striking back, and instead he made a statement that
was utterly absurd.

_I lost my mother and father, and I gained nothing from it. I became
nothing, neither daughter, nor wife, nor mother._

At her laughter, he took a step backward, as if she had struck him, and
his tan face reddened. Now she felt terror. This time she had surely
gone too far.

"Forgive me. Your answer surprised me. It sounds so strange for a man of
your profession to talk of finding God."

"What profession?"

"Well, you are a warrior and a spy, not a holy man."

"We do not need to speak of this." He turned away from her to stare out
the window. She looked past him at red-tiled rooftops. A flock of
pigeons circled in the distance.

"No," she said. "And as an unbeliever I suppose I would not understand."

Surprisingly he approached her and looked down with eyes that were
serious and free of anger. "If you ever, in sincerity, want to know
about Islam, come and ask me, and as best I can I will answer your
questions. But do not speak foolishness. And do not laugh."

She thought she understood a bit better. The Muslims had captured his
body, but then in his enslavement he had freely given his soul to their
religion. He did not serve the Turks. He served the God they called
Allah. How this had come about she could not imagine. But she knew a
little better why his sultan had entrusted him with this undertaking. He
was perfect for it.

"I must go," he said, as if eager not to talk anymore.

"To deliver your message?" She gestured toward the clenched fist that
held the fragile parchment. "Is there truly someone in Orvieto who can
read it?"

He smiled again. Oh, that smile! It so easily overcame her anger and
fear.

"There is no harm in my telling you. It goes to my sultan, by carrier
pigeon and ship." He must be proud, she thought, of his swift and secret
courier system.

"And do you get messag